


Cat and Mouse Games

by CantStopImagining



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: (But they don't know it yet), F/F, Fluff, Holtzmann is adorably irritating and irritatingly adorable, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 08:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8095069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantStopImagining/pseuds/CantStopImagining
Summary: Holtzmann notices that Erin doesn’t curse but then that shouldn’t be a surprise because Holtzmann notices everything Erin does or does not do. She notices the way she always folds her paper bags from the deli neatly into quarters before she puts them into the trash, how she likes to have her marker pens lined up along her desk, perfectly side by side, in colour order. She notices that she never turns the corners down on book pages, never eats near her computer, and never writes in the margins of her notebooks. Not cursing is just another one of her adorable quirks, as far as Holtzmann is concerned.It starts out as a cat and mouse game, and turns into something else.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay okay I know I'm terrible for not updating things I've already started but sometimes you don't get to choose what your brain wants you to write, and this thing has been the only fic I've been capable of working on for the past week. It's going to probably be about 3 or 4 chapters, and the next chapter is entirely already written - I'm going to work on a 'only posting the next chapter when the chapter after it is done' type method for this because I'm determined not to leave people in the lurch. I know I'm dreadful for it.
> 
> Who else is still crying over Kate McKinnon winning an Emmy?

Erin doesn’t curse. It’s a resolute part of who she is. Maybe it’s because she used to teach or maybe it’s because she’s a prude at heart or maybe it’s a bit of both. Either way, she doesn’t curse. A ghost knocks her off her feet or she winds up right in the line of ectoplasm fire? She mutters “shoot” and moves on. She’s never understood the point in cursing. It doesn’t serve any purpose. It doesn’t make her any less angry or take the bite out of anything.

That’s not to say she has sensitivity to other people cursing. If that was the case, she’d have shed Abby years ago (well, she sort of did, but that isn’t the point).

When Holtzmann lets out the longest string of curse words Erin has ever heard, mixed with a bunch of nonsensical words, it makes her laugh, nervously. She worries, of course, but somehow that many expletives in one constant stream gives her the impression Holtzmann is probably a-o.k. She’s more of a “yikes” gal the majority of the time, but still, it isn’t anything to worry about. Erin glances over at her and, yep, she seems to be more or less in one piece, even if her machinery isn’t.

-

Holtzmann notices that Erin doesn’t curse but then that shouldn’t be a surprise because Holtzmann notices everything Erin does or does not do. She notices the way she always folds her paper bags from the deli neatly into quarters before she puts them into the trash, how she likes to have her marker pens lined up along her desk, perfectly side by side, in colour order. She notices that she never turns the corners down on book pages, never eats near her computer, and never writes in the margins of her notebooks. Not cursing is just another one of her adorable quirks, as far as Holtzmann is concerned.

That’s what Holtzmann’s mission has been since day one, she supposes: to undo Erin. To move her out of her comfort zone. Not because she doesn’t like her the way she is, doesn’t enjoy every last one of her strange little rules, but because it’s a fun pastime. It’s what she does best: taking things apart and putting them back together again. She’s wanted to do that to Erin for a long time.

Even without Holtzmann’s interference, there’s an obvious change in Erin from when she first walks into their office at the Kenneth P. Higgins’ institute, all high-heels and tightly buttoned suits, and when she arrives at the Firehouse for the very first time, dressed in jeans and trainers. It isn’t just her physical appearance, though. Her whole demeanour is different. She’s almost completely let her guard down, and it inspires Holtzmann even further.

It starts with the pens. Holtzmann is attracted to chaos like a moth to a flame and she can’t help but bat at the neat row of pens when she sees them sitting there on Erin’s desk. Simply knocking them around isn’t enough though. Tongue between her teeth, she picks up the collection of pens - markers in neat alignment, biros and highlighters and even a fountain pen tucked neatly away in a pen holder which she upends immediately - and moves them around the desk methodically, before stepping back to admire her handiwork.

“Who did this?” Erin groans later, though she already has her suspicions.

Kevin rounds the corner of her desk and stares at the pens in puzzlement.

“NIRE-OLLEH,” he says, aloud, each sound painfully slow, and Erin barely suppresses another groan, “is it French?”

She doesn’t bother explaining to him that it’s upside down.

A few days later, Holtzmann swings down the fire pole and heads straight to the kitchen. She appears a moment later with goodies from the fridge: a yogurt, a cheese stick, and a carefully wrapped sandwich. She doesn’t think twice before dropping down into Erin’s desk chair, swivelling around in it once, and then making herself comfortable, feet up on the desk, barely an inch away from her keyboard. She unwraps the sandwich, tossing the wrapping aside in a flurry.

“Ugh!”

Halfway through the delicious sandwich, Holtzmann looks up to find Erin standing over her.

“Hey, sweet thing,” she says around a mouthful of salt-beef.

“You’re in my chair,” Erin says patiently, “and is that… yep, that’s my sandwich.”

Holtzmann wrinkles her brow, as if she has no idea what Erin’s talking about, as if it isn’t painfully obvious that she’s at Erin’s desk, and that she’s eating Erin’s sandwich, a sticky label with her name scrawled across it now stuck in the space between her keyboard and her mouse.

With a smirk she digs into the deep pocket of her overcoat and pulls out a freshly wrapped toasted bagel, tosses it onto the desk.

“You are intolerable,” Erin says, picking up the bagel, obviously about to toss it back to her.

Holtzmann can’t help but grin, “check it out, an Absolute Bagels - the best bagels in New York City - nova and cream cheese bagel, fresh from the store, and oh, is that,” she reaches into her pocket again, and plucks out something else, “a Madagascan vanilla and coconut cookie from the stand that Erin has been making moony eyes over for two weeks? I think it is!”

Erin’s cheeks flush and she rolls her eyes, accepting the cookie. She unwraps the bagel and takes a bite, unable to stop the sigh of pleasure that slips out as she sinks her teeth in.

“Okay, I will let you off, but you’re taking that sandwich away from my computer,” she murmurs, pushing Holtzmann’s boot-clad shoes down from the desk.

Holtzmann salutes her with two fingers, “aye aye captain.”

-

What happens a while later is actually a complete accident. They get called to a bust at Hudson Park Library, after a ghost attacks a school group, one hot and sticky afternoon in June. Even with all the modifications she’s made to the Ecto-3, Holtz hasn’t quite managed to get the air conditioning functioning properly with the nuclear weaponry stacked on the top of the vehicle, and its hotter than hell as they zoom through the streets of Manhattan, even with all the windows open. There’s no wind outside to circulate through the car, only hot air, which just serves to make the tin can they drive in even hotter, especially with two of them cramped into the back with Holtzmann’s new toy.

“It is not a toy,” Holtzmann huffs, when Abby refers to it as such, “it’s a heat regulator, and you’ll be thanking me for it when your proton packs don’t melt to your bodies.”

“If it’s meant to regulate heat, then why is it hotter than satan’s asshole in this damn vehicle?” Patty asks, waving a crumpled Pizza take-out leaflet as a make-shift fan.

“Because I can’t turn it on until we are outside the car. Nuclear reasons.”

Suited and booted, they head inside the public library, Patty and Holtzmann struggling to carry the large hunk of metal from the backseat, Abby and Erin carrying their proton packs in addition to their own. The sun beats down heavily on them, and by the time they’ve made it inside, they’re already dripping with sweat. Holtzmann pushes the sleeves up on her coveralls, unzips it a few inches from the top, and wipes her forehead on the back of her hand. She’s already discarded her leather gloves in the heat.

“Doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose of coveralls?” Erin says, gesturing to Holtzmann’s dishevelled suit.

“I don’t care, I need to breathe,” Holtzmann says, shooting her a look.

“I’ve put ice packs in my bra,” Abby announces, grinning smugly, and Erin gives her two thumbs ups, a look of disbelief on her features.

“How does this thing work?” Erin says, pointing to the new contraption, admitting defeat over the coverall situation.

“I’m not going to lie to you, it’s not entirely been tested,” Holtz drawls in that voice she always uses when she’s not 100% convinced something isn’t going to blow up, but doesn’t want Erin to panic, “but, in theory, it ought to suck the heat from our proton packs away from our bodies. The packs themselves, as you know, were built to avoid overheating and power outages - sort of like a heavy duty hairdryer - but with this heatwave, I’m not entirely convinced… this ought to take care of it though. I just put it together incredibly quickly, didn’t have time to make it more… portable.”

As such, it has to be plugged into two sockets and wheeled around the building, which Holtzmann takes care of. The library has been closed to the public, and there’s no sign of the librarian besides a note at the front desk with an email to send their invoice to. Fortunately, it being a public library, it has air conditioning, albeit a little old and rickety. It momentarily feels good, until the weight of their proton packs and the labour of moving stealthily through the old building makes the difference in temperature feel like barely anything at all. 

Naturally, when they find the ghost, and he eventually spews ectoplasm all over them, on the rare occasion that it misses Erin, its target is Holtzmann. Holtzmann, whose suit is unzipped, meaning that the majority of the green goo goes straight down the inside, and straight through to her underwear. She grunts, tossing out the containment unit, and the four of them trap the ghost. Altogether, the bust takes less than ten minutes.

Patty lets out a woop, and Erin gives her a look that says ‘I told you so’. Holtzmann, tossing the container unit aside, quickly tugs the zipper down and steps straight out of her coveralls. She mops absently at the string of green goo dripping down the length of her body, covered only by a sports bra and boxer shorts.

“Hey hey hey, this is a public institution Holtzy, I don’t think they need’a be seein’ your skinny white ass down the aisles near the classics,” Patty calls after her, as Holtzmann starts to gather up their equipment.

“Relax,” Holtzmann rolls her eyes, “there’s no one here. And we’re all friends.”

“Nothing we haven’t seen before,” Abby points out, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Maybe some of us,” Holtz thinks she hears Erin mutter under her breath. She turns to look at her, and she’s bright red, looking like she has no idea where to look.

Holtzmann can’t resist it. She turns away, glances purposefully over her shoulder, shaking her boxers-clad butt, and makes sure she locks eyes with Erin.

Then, she winks. 

Slowly, and with a sly grin, one dimple perfectly visible.

Before she can really enjoy the full effect it has on Erin, she returns to what she’s doing. And maybe it isn’t a calculated part of this whole wind up routine she’s got going, but she knows its worked. Mostly because on the way home, despite being dressed now in an over-sized Waffle House t-shirt, Erin won’t look at her, won’t meet her eyes.

When she does, she blushes profusely and looks away, and, for Holtzmann, it's almost a Eureka! moment.


	2. Chapter 2

Holtzmann has always liked the effect her goofing around has on people, especially the tightly wound, uptight kinds of people. Her mentor, Rebecca Gorin, is one of the best examples. A truly incredible woman who taught Holtzmann near enough everything she knows and who she respects more than most people on earth. An academic, perhaps not as conventional as Erin, but with the same stiff posture as the professors Erin used to work with.

Holtzmann had figured out how to make her laugh - albeit reluctantly - in less than a week.

It’s a bond between the two of them that she knows Rebecca doesn’t have with many - if any - other people, and that makes it special, and Holtzmann is very rarely special to anyone. She figures the same thing must be the driving force behind this ongoing game with Erin.

After that day at the library, though, she realises maybe it’s different. Maybe the effect she has on Erin is different. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s been oblivious to it - on two separate occasions Abby has had to spell it out to her in black and white when a girl is flirting with her. It’s not like Holtzmann is stupid, she just has a tendency to take things at face value. She enjoys it when people react positively to her behaviour, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she understands that reaction every time.

Once she realises that she may have been wrong about Erin, she decides she needs to look at this ongoing game between them in a different light, flip it on its head as it were. She needs more data to work with. It’s the same as taking a machine apart when it malfunctions, and suddenly realising that you’ve put a piece in backwards.

First of all, she mulls methodically over her own actions, and, of course, reactions. She thinks back to the first time they met. Despite knowing Abby’s history with Erin, she had found herself intrigued by her. Holtzmann probably should have been more defensive towards the only friend she had, but she had willingly let Erin in almost immediately. That spoke volumes. Even from their first interactions, Holtzmann had automatically flirted with her. At first it was for a mixture of reasons: 1. she liked making her squirm, 2. she was incredibly pretty, and 3. she was especially pretty when she was squirming. It had mostly been shallow, but then they had become closer, and the flirting had never really ended because….. well, she isn’t actually entirely sure why. Especially since she was pretty certain that Erin wasn’t interested in her in any romantic sense. It didn’t exactly take Poirot levels of detective work to realise that Erin was attracted to Kevin.

After a while, Erin had seemed to become more comfortable with Holtzmann’s constant teasing, and it had just felt like an inside joke between the two of them. A natural occurrence. Holtzmann flirts, or dances provocatively, or does silly little things to wind Erin up, Erin rolls her eyes or tells her to cut it out (though always with a smile peeking through her mock annoyance), and the cycle continues.

This new evidence, however, forces Holtzmann to think back to other things. Drunk nights at Joe’s bar, having one too many beers, giggling at a corner booth, her head propped on Erin’s shoulder. The way Erin’s eyes sometimes drift to her lips, a move that Holtzmann has always brushed off as something else. That easy way in which they are always beating along to the same rhythm when they work together, bouncing ideas off each other like they’ve been partners for life. Holtzmann slides an arm around Erin’s waist and Erin fits into her side, resting her chin on her shoulder like she belongs there. Silent offerings of coffee, or snacks, or sandwiches, or keeping each other company without even needing to say a word to one another, content just to work side by side on different projects. 

Holtzmann had thought that was just what friends did, but now she isn’t so sure. Now, the data seems to suggest something else. Friends don’t get uncomfortable seeing other friends in their underwear, do they? To be fair, Holtzmann doesn’t have much evidence to go by on that. She’s never exactly been swarming in friends, and it isn’t really something she can ask Abby or Patty about.

After contemplating it for a while, she decides it’s time to change tactics.

Like any good scientist, Holtzmann knows to run her experiment more than once, and collect multiple samples of data before going ahead with a conclusion. She may be reckless with other… projects, but this one is more important.

So, the next time she strips down to her underwear - this time it’s the result of an almost-explosion, really only a small poof at best, and it was maybe sort of entirely intentional - she’s sure to pay very close attention to Erin’s reaction. Erin, who comes running over with a fire extinguisher, and stops in her tracks when she realises Holtzmann’s already part way stripped out of her overalls.

“Pant leg was on fire,” Holtzmann explains, taking the extinguisher from Erin and spraying it at the pile of clothes on the floor, “safety first,” she adds, grinning manically. 

Erin’s cheeks flush bright red, and she looks momentarily flustered, before some sort of back-up generator kickstarts her brain, and she’s kneeling on the floor, gently probing at Holtzmann’s leg.

“By some miracle, you’ve only got a tiny surface burn,” she breathes, running the pads of her finger tips very lightly over the surrounding skin, “you really need to be more careful.”

“Careful shmareful.”

Erin glares at her, looking up from where she’s knelt in a fairly compromising position, and obviously realising this a beat too late. Her cheeks colour. She scrambles to her feet, and Holtzmann watches her go to the side of the room for the first aid kit.

“I’m serious,” she says, as she’s going through the small red box, “we’ve got to get some proper lab protocols set up before you seriously hurt yourself.”

“What if I told you I set fire to my pants on purpose?”

Erin narrows her eyes, “I’d tell you you’re an idiot.”

Holtzmann muses over this for a moment, deciding that, yes, she probably is right. Fortunately, Erin seems to think she’s joking, and lets the matter drop, carefully cleaning Holtzmann’s wound and pressing a padded bandaid over it.

“Gonna kiss it better?” Holtzmann teases.

“I hate you,” Erin says, but the look of concern hasn’t completely fizzled out of her expression, and she’s biting back a smile. Holtzmann notices that she’s very carefully looking at her face and absolutely not anywhere else.

This data backs up her hypothesis.

So does the weird tingling feeling Holtzmann gets when Erin’s lips ghost over the spot where the bandaid is, rolling her eyes before she slinks off back to work, leaving Holtzmann to get dressed.

-

They get back from a late night bust just as the sun is coming up, and everybody’s exhausted, but they can’t justify going home, if for no other reason than Kevin will be in in a couple of hours, and will never understand if he arrives to find an empty office, no matter how many messages they leave him. There’s two cots up on the third floor that they sometimes use in case of emergencies, and Abby and Patty immediately call shotgun on them, heading wearily up the stairs. Not that either Holtzmann or Erin mind: they’re used to not getting very much sleep. And besides, Erin is in desperate need of a shower.

Erin returns from the bathroom and sits heavily on the couch. Holtzmann appears with two cups of coffee, presses one into Erin’s hands, and sets the other one down on the side. She practically leaps onto the couch, landing with her head in Erin’s lap.

Erin’s too tired to manage more than a muffled grumble as she sips gratefully at her coffee. She scoffs as she sets her cup down - the ‘Hot Stuff’ mug that ‘mysteriously’ replaced her pi one - and Holtzmann beams at her. She nuzzles into Erin’s stomach happily, taking in the glorious scent of apricot and coconut that she’s come to associate with freshly-washed Erin.

Sometime later, Holtzmann wakes up groggy and confused. Someone’s laughing, and she tries to bury her head in her pillow to drown it out, only to realise her pillow is moving.

“Mmmm, no, don’t do that,” Erin murmurs, somewhere above her, her fingers poking into Holtzmann’s sides, and all at once she’s awake.

Abby and Patty are laughing at someone’s phone screen. Kevin is sitting at his desk looking confused.

Holtz is still draped across Erin, and she thinks she should probably sit up, but her head is very comfortable right where it is, pressed against Erin’s chest. That is, until Erin shifts, and somehow manages to hit Holtzmann’s chin with her knee. The movement sends a jolt of pain straight through her jaw, and she nearly bites her tongue in surprise. Instead, she yelps, and Erin startles awake, and then there’s an awkward moment where they’re too tangled up to pull apart from each other, and Erin laughs nervously, her cheeks pink and her hair sticking up on end. 

In a blink, Holtzmann thinks: _yep, something’s definitely changed._


End file.
